Usually we don't make changes in the middle of games. This time we did.

Starting immediately, and continuing through all Festivus games, a new "autobuild" feature is running. When a player quits, all the worlds in his cluster, including his homeworld, queue up fodder units. This works much like the "Homeworld Defense League" does for active players who appear to have forgotten their homeworld builds . . .

The goal, of course, is to reduce the advantage you get when a neighbor quits. His worlds will be harder to take and will have less accumulated Ult. They'll probably still be more profitable conquests than the worlds in a player empire, but not so much so! Let us know what you think about this; there is now an "Autobuild" thread in the UC forum.